Thanks for this post Ellen. Great thoughts here, plus any post in the L&D field that finds a legit use for the word "epistemological" gets bonus points from me. I have a degree in philosophy, and am creator of epistemelinks.com, a large philosophy directory site that has been online since 1997 if you can believe that!
Lots of organizations are just now getting into traditional e-learning. And here I mean the stuff that us more leading edge folks who are talking about social learning/Learning 2.0/etc. consider to be old news or "click-next" formal learning modules. So I'm not at all surprised that so many in the L&D industry are not up to speed on all the latest technologies, on the growing importance of tech-enabled informal learning, and so on. When you have 60+ hours of work to do in 40 hours (esp. when colleagues were let go in the past 8 months), who has time to look into the merits and possible uses of wikis, blogs, forums, twitter, and so on? Even if the boss is vaguely telling you to "start using some of that Web 2.0 stuff" in the training you deliver or the learning programs you create/author/design/manage, if you aren't given the time/etc. to do it, or if the directive is contradicted by other, more clearly defined traditional objectives, then it won't happen. I've heard this countless times from learning leaders in organizations across all industries at each L&D conference I've been to.
You and most of the folks commenting here so far (hi Dave, Will, and Dave!) are the tip of the relevant pyramid: people who speak at conferences, write whitepapers in the L&D industry, and generally stay up on all of the latest technologies, methods, etc. We have a lot of work to do, to help organizations slowly move in the direction of Web 2.0/etc., and I think the a critical personality trait for us will be: patience.
I've been thinking about some of the same insights you shared in this post. For instance, I raised the issue of what the future of the ID role will be -- an exciting future in my view -- at the ID Zone session that Mark Oerhlert and I did at the Guild's AG in March. I got some odd looks in response, but it also spawned some good discussions.

There's nothing like a good flurry of tweets to help crystalize some new insights. I've been reading lots of tweets, retweets, replies and even a few direct messages from people I follow commenting on today's sessions from #ASTD, otherwise known as the American Society for Training and Developme...

Frederick Hahn, Drs. Michael Eades and Mary Dan Eades put forth a rather different exercise regimen. Once you get going on it, it amounts to one 30 minute session, only once a week. There are very specific exercises, that you do with a timer or metronome handy, for two minutes each. You use appropriate weight levels (will take a few session to figure out appropriate levels for each individual). The key is that you do the reps *very slowly* (say, taking 10 seconds for each rep) and to the point of muscle failure. In the book they describe the benefits of this approach, why it works, and why it makes sense in terms of the biology of our muscles and so on. One key aspect of the article is that by strictly following this approach you are forcing your muscles to do *all* the work, instead of relying on momentum, your bone structure, gravity, etc. -- which most people who workout with weights end up cheating (often without realizing it).
It is a *very* quick read, because the first third is the info/theory, then the other two thirds are the directions for the exercises: one set for home workouts and one set for gym workouts.
So, because of that, you might find you could read the first part in just a few days, and only read the exercises if/when you were interested to give it a try. Hence you could put it near the top of your reading list without putting off the next books by more than a few days. :-)
Anyway, if you ever do read it, I'd be interested in your take on it... at that point, presumably you'd do a blog post on it so I'll just keep reading (as I would anyway!).

I don't post a lot about the specifics of my workouts. Why? Well, whereas all the diet & fasting stuff was very accessible and could be put into practice quickly -- with quick results to verify, repeat, verify, and so on -- workouts never struck me like that. I'm a neophyte (still) but that's ch...

I don't post a lot about the specifics of my workouts. Why? Well, whereas all the diet & fasting stuff was very accessible and could be put into practice quickly -- with quick results to verify, repeat, verify, and so on -- workouts never struck me like that. I'm a neophyte (still) but that's ch...